Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris Plus  for Friday, April 19th.  The sun rises at 6:51.  It’ll be up for 13 hours and 41 minutes, setting at 8:32.   The moon, 1 day past first quarter, will set at 3:51 tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow is Astronomy Day 2013.  Astronomy Day is generally held on the Saturday closest to the first quarter moon in late April or early May.  The Grand Traverse Astronomical Society will celebrate with a star party at Northwestern Michigan College.  Tomorrow April 20th, from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m.  There will also be activities inside the observatory, so clear or cloudy there will be something to see or do for all ages.

The Lyrid Meteor Shower will be active this weekend and reach a peak Monday morning.  The meteors from this shower will seem to come from near the constellation of Lyra the harp, a northern summer constellation, with the bright star Vega with a small and narrow parallelogram of stars near it.  We do have a moon problem this year, so it just might be caught by early risers in the next couple of mornings.  It is not a super active shower, and has a peak rate of only 18 and hour when Vega is overhead, which it will be at 5 in the morning.  With the experience of the bright meteor that broke windows in Russia, be comforted to know that meteor showers members are created with very small grains, not big boulders.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

*Ephemeris Plus contains more information in the post’s body that could not fit into the time constraints of the Ephemeris program.

Addendum

Lyrid meteor radiant. The bright star is Vega